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Web Browsers: Brave on Linux and Brave in the News
As I did last time, I wanted my web browser post to contain both news stories about browsers that have caught my attention and my thoughts on the newest web browser I’m trying out. Let’s start with the news. As you probably have heard if you’re paying any attention to browsers, one of the selling…
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Software I used for Programming in 2020
I last wrote about the software I’m using while programming back in March. I think at the time I was thinking of writing quarterly updates, but my preferences didn’t change with that much regularity. I decided to make it one of my annual posts instead. So here is the software I used in 2020 to…
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Moving to KDevelop for my larger Python Projects
When I first started programming it was just at the prompt of my Tandy computer. Then it was in the QBasic text editor on the IBM computers at school. But when I started programming again with “real” languages, I ended up going with Emacs. Although I was first annoyed at the way commands like save…
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Leaving CrunchBang Linux for Lubuntu
I first migrated to CrunchBang Linux because they kept talking about it on Linux Outlaws. Specifically they mentioned how fast it was and, if I recall correctly, Fab was using it on his netbook. My laptop battery life was quickly dwindling so, if I wanted to be able to use it on a plane, I…
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Review: Arch Linux
I’ve been wanting to try Arch Linux for quite some time now. They seem to have a similar aesthetic to Gentoo in that the main mission of Arch is to build your operating system from the ground up. You only add the things you need. So you don’t have any cruft on your system based…
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Slackware 13 Revisit
In my Slackware 13 review mfillpot gave some suggestions to improve the Slackware experience and I thought I would give them a shot. First off, changing the init level to 4 to allow KDM to show up instead of this startx business. I was happy to note that Slackware had emacs. So many distros have…
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Review: Slackware 12.2
I already tried installing Gentoo. Twice. The other Linux distro for the hardcore, for whom the Ubuntus and the Fedoras is too easy, is Slackware. Slackware is, of course, the oldest surviving Linux distro. I’ve already reviewed some distros based off of Slackware such as Zenwalk and Slax. Along the way I’ve come to learn…
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Review: Zenwalk 5.2
Somewhere along the line I got into my head that Slackware was a distro that involved having to compile everything. From what I can gather from Wikipedia, The Slackware Website, and some comments to my Gentoo post, I was wrong. Slackware apparently uses packages, just like every other modern distro. The difference is that dependency…
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History Meme
[emesa@mario ~]$ uname -a Linux mario.mushroomkingdom 2.6.24.5-85.fc8 #1 SMP Sat Apr 19 12:39:34 EDT 2008 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux [emesa@mario ~]$ history | awk ‘{a[$2]++}END{for(i in a){print a[i] ” ” i}}’ | sort -rn | head 176 ls 172 eog 81 ./makeSpiral.pl 80 cd 61 ./makefibonaccicollage.pl 58 mplayer 51 ./makePolar.pl 36 mv 28 flickr_views.py 24…
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Lightweight Linux Throwdown
I’ve used Damn Small Linux (DSL) quite a bit in the past. Before getting my laptop I used to use it to be able to get a Linux desktop at my in-laws’ house. I decided I wanted to try out some of these other lightweight Linux distros that everyone is always talking about. Even on…
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gNewSense 2.0 (deltah) Review
So gNewSense 2.0 came out a few days ago as the gNewSense crew is tracking Ubuntu LTS releases. Of course, the bad part is that there is no upgrade path from gNewSense 1.0 to 2.0. Ubuntu recommends upgrading by going from release to release so upgrading is not feasible (or is too hard for the…
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Why XML files are so much better than Binary files
For my latest animation, “Jose’s Dinner“, I was using Cinelerra for the 2D animatic. I was working on it while I was at my in-law’s house so I was using the laptop. However, we try to use the laptop as little as possible to keep extend the life of the laptop, so when I got…
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My computer Experience
Responding to Penguin Pete’s WHY is the transition from Windows to Linux easy for some people?, I had no idea my response would be so lengthy. So I decided to copy it over to my blog. Read his and the other comments and here’s mine. As for me, my first computer was a Tandy T80…
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The Linux Half-Truth
With Windows Vista requiring a computer more powerful than the majority of computer users have, many have touted Linux as the savior of these PCs. Do not throw away your PC because you must upgrade to Vista. Get all the graphical goodness and latest software with Linux. It has modest hardware requirements and will even…
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The Paradox of Free and Fair Elections
This morning I watch the Diebold documentary, “Hacking Democray”, on HBO or one of its affiliate networks. The basic information in the documentary was not news to me. Since I currently live in Maryland, the news that Johns Hopkins had obtained the source code to the voting machines was all over the place. I knew,…